The Big R...

The next several months will be interesting to observe as the US economy edges closer to the word no one wants to say: Recession.

Already the blogosphere is manifest with entries like "Recession-proof Your Career" and "What to do if you’re laid off in 2008 recession". In IT, recessions mean more if you're at a company that bleeds workforce now and then (Ford, Yahoo, GM, etc.). Everyone fears the faceless spectre of the impersonal pink slip; the five-minute meeting on Friday afternoon. Even when I was at a large corporation (That started with an H and ended with a long Japanese-sounding string of characters) the possiblity of a layoff wasn't as bad as it could have been.

Recessions are scary only if you don't know what you'll do if you lose your job. Fortunately, you aren't in that boat, right? (Right??) The magic of our economy has taught us never to assume we'll have a job a day, a week, a month or a year from now. It's actually a good thing. By accepting that we might at any point throw ourselves back into the job market, we're keeping our job skills relevant (There's no old-folks home for punch card operators or Filemaker database administrators). We're looking at staying on the right side of bleeding edge (either because the tech is bleeding-edge, or our execution is).

IT still is a growth industry - recession or not. The current economy woes are happening for a variety of reasons, but none of them are because people are using their computers less. Scott Adams (The creator of Dilbert) said that jobs once-removed from the customer experience (anything with the word 'quality' or 'initiative' or 'process' in the title, for example) could easily be considered redundant and layoff-prone. The reality is a little bit more sinister - if you're working a job that's not directly connected with the success of the company you're also layoff prone.

'But my job is connected to the success of the company!' you cry. Really? Does your boss think so? Have you asked him, lately? That might be a good step, señor. No matter what you think reality is, it doesn't matter as much to your career as what your boss thinks reality is. Make sure that your version of reality and your boss' looks the same. If you're in that 'layoff-prone' category, what should you do?

First of all - embrace it. Hugh MacLeod of Gapingvoid says "If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you". Forget the "Who Moved My Cheese" and the "People will have multiple careers in their lifetime" statements - losing your job still sucks. It still hurts to be laid off. Whether anyone wants to admit it or not - we draw a substantial amount of identity and information about ourselves from our jobs. When that source of identity and information says "You aren't worth keeping around", that's a blow to you - a legitimate impact on your emotional and/or mental health. I don't know why so many people walk around with the 'losing your job shouldn't matter to you' rap. It does matter - it does hurt. Pretending that it doesn't only postpones that process - accept the pain for a while (a short while...1 or 2 days max) and then make up your mind to go out and get a new job.

So you've mentally moved on...now what? Let's talk job searching strategies. What's worked for me, since I have a non-traditional resume (jumped around a lot inside IT, no 4-year degree) is to work on marketing myself. Before I worked for The Company I Work For (TCIWF) I had to learn a lot about how to find a job. I'd been at the H-company for over 5 years. I drew some interesting parallels between searching for a job and dating. I'll discuss the details in a future blog post.